Maturity Proven to Justify Upgrade

Introduction

A large Midwest food producer uses EDI for nearly all their sales to mass merchants, grocers, and food service companies. To achieve the highest level of process automation, allowing Customer Service the most time to scrutinize orders for the correct prices, discounts, and promotion end dates, they upgraded to v. 5.2 of Sterling B2B™. The result: better system performance and tighter clustering in their virtual machine environment.

Overview

During the upgrade, three instances of Sterling B2B™ were configured:

  1. Production
  2. Quality Assurance
  3. Development/Test

In the new configuration, the database was residing on one Virtual Machine and the application installed on another, which is preferred configuration. This configuration yields better performance and reduced memory constraint issues with the SQL server. Additionally, moving to the current version assured prompt and accurate support.

The steps were:

  1. Planning (about 24 hours)
  2. Suspending changes
  3. Installing the Development/Test instance on a new server (about 16 hours)
  4. Load testing it (included in the 16 hours for step 3)
  5. I.T. user training (about 10 hours)
  6. Installing the Production instance and cutting-over to production (about 8 hours)
    1. Done on a Saturday
    2. Monitoring performance (about 4 hours)
    3. Permitting changes
    4. Archiving off the old system, maps, and data (about 4 hours)
      1. This time is for a straight cut-over. Only EDI is processed, application-application features are not used.

Many other benefits are available in this release as well, including:

  • AS2 updates including throttling capabilities and email notifications of participants on delivery failures.
  • Enhanced Security updates.
  • The ability to update standards without updating Sterling B2B™. Sterling updates the various standards 3-4 times a year and now you can do it without a full B2B™ upgrade.

This upgrade took roughly 80 hours to complete. It included thorough system work load testing. All updates are unique and DCS can help you determine the level of effort needed.

Conclusion

DCS knows Sterling’s products and has in-depth experience upgrading and migrating various configurations. With our experience, we can thoroughly, quickly, and economically upgrade or migrate your existing system to meet your current needs. Our DCS GROW™ Development Service ensures your implementation will be smooth and your cash flow uninterrupted. The first step is easy, just e-mail DCS for your FREE Assessment.

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